if you trust what's in your heart (what better can you do)
by TheJGatsby
Summary: After the war, Rey likes to savor the peace on her own sometimes. Then she's not alone anymore. (Eventual Reylo)


A/N: Based on a tumblr post- "Headcanon: postwar. Rey finds some quiet place where she could be alone bc she's not used to the noise of being around ppl. One day Kyli is there when she arrives. And he just kept showing up after that."  
i'm going with Finn being force-sensitive and being trained as well but also being sort of between Jedi and not  
Title from Do What You Do by Noah and the Whale

It's hard, after the war, to get used to peace. Rey's never really experienced this sort of… calm. She's used to struggling, day in and day out, if not in actual combat then on Jakku, where every day was a battle in and of itself. So the idea of there being nothing for her to fight against, no odds for her to overcome, is just- it's a lot to take in. That's not to say she doesn't like it- stars, she _loves_ it, but it's the _peace_ she loves, the ability to just sit back and close her eyes and know she's safe without having to worry about ambushes or enemies or heat exhaustion. Everything that comes with galactic peace, though, the bureaucracy and debates and trying to decide how the new Jedi order fits into it, hell, what the new Jedi order even _is_ , all of that she could do without. It doesn't help that Luke seems entirely content to just continue training Force-sensitives on the hidden planet in the middle of nowhere and stay completely uninvolved in galactic affairs, but the Jedi have _always_ had a place in the galaxy, a function, as peacekeepers, negotiators, whatever. Rey and Finn have tried pestering him again and again to go to Coruscant and throw his own self into the debate rather than letting them speak for the entire order, but he just responds every time with "Read your history, the Jedi having a role in politics has never brought anything but strife. It was the downfall of the order in my father's day and I won't have it be the downfall of mine." So it's up to them, the only two Knights in the galaxy, to figure out what "Jedi" even means now. It's frustrating.

Rey loves the people she's around, with everything she has, but it all gets so exhausting sometimes, and she just needs to escape. The Falcon is, unofficially but uncontestedly, hers, but it's so… conspicuous. When she needs to be alone she takes a small, one man fighter with an external hyperdrive, like the kind the old Jedi order used during the Clone Wars, and she takes a day off. There's a particular planet about two star systems away, far enough that she feels removed but not so far that she couldn't be back quickly in a crisis, no sentient life, just peaceful, furry creatures that aren't afraid of her despite her noisy fighter. There's a wide lake nestled among some mountains, and she'll go there and lay down in the grass and breathe in the sweet summer-scented air and listen to the sound of chattering animals and gently lapping lakewater, and just revel in the _peace_ of it all. If she had to pick a favorite spot in the galaxy, other than wherever her friends were, it'd be here. It's beautiful, it's solitary, it's tranquil, and most importantly, it's _hers_.

That is, it was hers. For months. Till he showed up.

When she saw him there the first time, he was standing by the lake where she always laid, and she almost didn't recognize him without all the black, in beige spacer's garb with his hair shorn off. But then she did, and her staff-saber was out and at his throat before she'd even thought about it.

"Give me one good reason not to slice open your disgusting neck right now," she snarled.

He looked over at her, the long, twisted scar running up his face filling her with a sense of pride, and smiled bitterly. "There isn't one. Go ahead."

And, stars, she should do it. She _knows_ she should do it with every fiber of her being, but- there's a part of her that thinks she shouldn't, as well. A part of her that doesn't really see him as a threat, not only because he hasn't made a move against her yet, but also because she can _see_ the scar and she can remember the fight she won and she's… not afraid. Not of him. Besides, Luke wouldn't want her to be. He would tell her to put her saber away and talk to him, because there's always something to say, especially between enemies. She's not quite at 'disarming' levels of diplomacy, but she's not going to kill him unless he makes her either. "What are you doing here? How did you find me?"

He looks sidelong at her, unimpressed. "Believe me, it's complete coincidence we're both here, I didn't come looking for you."

"What do you want, then?"

"To not die," he replies dryly. "I have no desire to fight you, I just want to be left in peace. I've had enough of fighting you." He gestures to the scar on his face.

He looks tired and gaunt, almost to the point of being unthreatening, as if he hasn't eaten or slept well in months, and she can't see a weapon anywhere on him. So she extinguishes her staff, holds out her hand, and says, "Truce?"

His dark eyes narrow in suspicion, but he reaches out and shakes her hand cautiously. "Truce."

She nods somberly, and then lays down in the grass, letting her weapon roll out of her hand a few inches- just out of arm's reach, close enough that the Force could have it in her hand in a second, but also obviously non-threatening. Insurance, not an offensive. He stares quizzically down at her and she shrugs, propping her hands behind her head in the picture of casual relaxation. "We're at peace," she says. "I'm enjoying it. You should too."

"I don't think I really have the right to enjoy this peace," he replies, sitting down carefully a few feet away from her, one long leg stretched out in front of him, the other pulled up to his chest. The way he sits and moves favors the stretched-out leg, as if it's injured, and she wonders vaguely where he's been, in the same way she's been wondering since… Starkiller, really. They hadn't heard anything of him after the battle on the weapon-planet, nothing definitive, just rumors. Rumors that he'd defected, left the First Order, the dark side. The Resistance had decided he was dead, though, because the whole damn planet blew up, and left it at that. No one they knew encountered him again, and, at least to Rey, it was probably easier for Leia to believe her son was dead than knowing he was still evil, or somewhere alone in the galaxy, hunted, in danger.

"Everyone gets to enjoy peace," Rey responds. "Especially in a place like this."

"It'd be a shame to ruin this atmosphere with a fight," he replies. She hums in agreement, and closes her eyes, letting the sun soak into her skin.

They're there for hours. She doesn't fall asleep, doesn't trust him like that yet. Half of her is still screaming to either run or take him down where he sits, but the other half, the half she choses to listen to, reminds her of the one lesson Luke thought was most important, the one he drilled into her over and over- the only way to achieve peace is to seek it out, make it happen. She reaches out gently with the Force, and where Ren's presence used to feel like barely-contained rage, turbulent emotion, a thunderhead threatening to burst any second, it now just feels like… sadness, mostly. Almost hollow, like he's burned through all the passionate feeling that used to define him, all his fury dead like a wildfire with nothing left to consume, and the space is only half-filled with bitter regret and melancholy. It feels, to her, like he's already started leaving the Dark Side behind on his own.

When she feels the shadows cover her, the sun dip beyond the horizon, she decides it's time to go back. Without a word between them, she stands and stretches and strolls back to her fighter and heads home.

Immediately upon landing on Coruscant, she goes straight to Finn and Poe's apartment and bangs on the door until Finn appears, looking disheveled.

"I need to talk to you," she says, quiet and earnest, and he nods and drags her inside.

"What's happening?" Poe asks, pulling his shirt back on as he walks up. "Danger?"

"Jedi business," Rey responds, dragging Finn to the kitchen. "Go back to your… whatever."

"Okay, what's happening, what's going on?" Finn asks, voice soft and urgent.

"I ran into Kylo Ren," she whispers back, barely managing to contain her excitement.

" _Stars_ , Rey!" Finn nearly shouts, then remembers to quiet himself. "Are you all right? Did he hurt you? Is he dead?"

Rey frowns for a second then shakes her head. "No, no, it's not- we didn't fight. I don't even think he was armed. He was just… there. I think the rumors about him defecting were true, Finn, I could feel him in the Force, he seemed like he wasn't, I don't know, like all that hate and anger had just gone away. Like he'd burned himself out. He seemed almost empty." Finn looks at her warily, as if he can tell what she's about to suggest. "I'm going to go back, tomorrow. I'll give you the coordinates, just in case I'm wrong, but… I think this could be it, Finn, I think we could bring him back."

"Are you insane, Rey? He tried to kill us! He almost _did_ kill us! Just because he's suddenly tragic-"

"Did you forget everything Luke taught us? About finding peace and forgiveness?"

Finn scowls. "That's different, Rey, he's beyond all that, he doesn't _want_ to be good, he's probably just fooling you into trusting him so he can get the drop on you."

"Then call me a fool, because my gut is telling me something is different, and I'm listening to that instinct." She glares at her friend with the stubborn look that means there's no negotiating.

"I don't like this," he says, frowning, but knowing the battle is over. "It's not going to end well."

"Your opinion is acknowledged," Rey replies primly.

Finn heaves a heavy sigh, looking weary. "Should we tell the gener- Leia? She'll want to know."

Rey bites her lip for a moment, then shakes her head. "I think we'd better wait. He seems… jumpy. I want to be absolutely sure I'm right, that we can save him. She's been through so much, Finn, we shouldn't risk giving her false hope. If I'm wrong, and… and I have to do something drastic, I don't want her to have to lose him again."

"Okay," he replies, nodding slowly, still trying to convince himself. "Okay. This is what Luke would want us to do. Save him from the darkness, turn him back to the light. Give me the coordinates, I'll come after you if I haven't heard from you by nightfall."

"It's going to take a while, and you can't tell anyone, but… Finn, what if this is it? What if we can _save_ him?" She's practically bouncing with excitement, her first real test as a Jedi, her first trial in the Force.

"Oh, I still think this is crazy," Finn assures her. "I think you should've put your staff through him a dozen times and had done with it, but this seems like the Jedi thing to do, and you're the real Jedi here." Rey beams at him.

* * *

The next day, he's already sitting by the lake when she arrives, and she leaves her staff about a foot away when she sits down next to him.

"If I ask you something," she says after a moment of silence, "will you answer?"

He considers the mountain on the other side of the lake before responding. "That depends what you ask."

She pulls her knees up to her chest and props her chin atop them and just looks sideways at him. She's on his bad side, so she can see the scar bisecting his cheek, the groove it cuts in the bridge of his crooked nose. His weak leg is stretched out in front of him again and he's sitting up straight, because of course he's incapable of relaxing. "Where's your lightsaber?" she asks finally, and sees him sag a little in relief, either at the end of her scrutinization or at the easiness of the question.

"I left it behind when I-" he cuts himself off, as if to maintain a secret. "I don't have it anymore. It's probably been destroyed, who knows."

She starts tearing up grass, blade by blade, examining each one before dropping it. "So where have you been, then? We'd all figured you died when Starkiller exploded."

"I'd assumed." He doesn't say anything else, so she lets it drop, for now. She'll ask again later. There's no point pushing him now, not when everything is still so… tentative.

"You feel different," she observes after another long silence. "Your… aura, I think is the word. You're not angry now, you're just…."

"Blank?" he supplies, then smiles bitterly. "It's hard to be passionate when the only person you can really hate anymore is yourself." She reaches out with the Force again, and it's too easy to read him, like he's not even trying to keep walls up anymore, and yeah, there it is, right under all the guilt, an intense, dark undercurrent of self-loathing, the basis of everything, the only emotion still moving and living in him in all the still, silent mournfulness of his heart.

"What happened to you?" she asks quietly, almost more to herself than anything.

He reaches up and touches the scar on his face, as if by habit, then seems to remember himself and drops his hand as suddenly as if he'd been burned, but he doesn't say anything else.

When she stands to leave, he glances up, looking at her for the first time. "Wait, does- did you tell my mother? That I'm…." He trails off, letting the sentence hang in the air.

"No," she responds, picking up her staff-saber off the ground and slinging it over her shoulder.

"Good," he responds quietly. "I'm not ready for… she doesn't need to know yet."

"Not until I'm certain you're coming back," Rey says, with more confidence than she has, then turns and walks away so she can't see his face, hear his response. She doesn't want to know what he thinks of her plan.

She sees him several more times over the next week or two, and they make halting, uncertain progress, talking about safe topics like her life on Jakku and the planets they've both visited, but then there's a Senate crisis, and then a civil dispute on a distant planet that she and Finn have to go resolve, and then red tape and hoops and general nonsense, and all told it's about a week and a half before she makes it back to their planet.

He's not there when she arrives, so she ends up sitting at the edge of the lake with her feet in the water, waiting for him. When he does get there, he strips off his boots and sticks his own pale feet into the water as well, grimacing at the cold. Rey loves the feeling of being cold while the sun is out, a delicious sort of oxymoron she still can't quite process even after being off Jakku for… years, now.

"Why do you want me to come back?" he asks, almost immediately. "Why haven't you killed me?"

"It's the Jedi way," she replies, in the same cryptic, exaggeratedly wise tone Luke always uses. His head swivels toward her in shock, and then she snorts, and he lets out a bark of surprised laughter. After a moment she speaks again. "Everyone deserves the chance to be better. We thought you were dead for years, you apparently weren't, but you also weren't doing anything, you know, evil, so I figured I should at least sort out that mystery before I started separating parts of you with my saber." She gestures vaguely behind her, to where the saber lies about a half foot out of immediate reach. The more time she spends around him, the less she feels like she needs it. He's not even armed.

"I was… atoning," he responds. "For lack of a better word. I left the First Order, and I was on the run. I tried to… be good, when I wasn't hiding. Acts of kindness. Meditating away my rage." He kicks out the leg that isn't injured, sending a splash into the air. "There wasn't much of anything left once it was gone, though. But you knew that."

Rey hums. "How old were you?" she asks. "When Snoke first started to turn you?"

He stiffens, his fists clenching and unclenching, and she feels in the Force a wave of sick fear and blinding panic, the sort of reaction she'd expect from a child about to be beaten, not a grown man thinking of his former teacher. "I wish I could tell you," he replies, something dark and hard in his voice. "He's always been there, in some way, all around the edges. Even when I was with Luke. Even before. As far back as I can remember." He breathes in, deep, and lets it out in a gusty sigh, and the roiling black emotions start to ebb and fade away. "But I was fifteen when I left Luke."

"Fifteen?" Rey exclaims. "That's- stars, Kylo, you-"

"Don't call me that," he says, looking at her suddenly with an intense, unreadable expression, somewhere between pain and shame. "That's not… please don't call me that."

"Ben?" she says, questioning. After a moment, he nods. "I thought you were… I don't know. You were just a _kid_."

"I was old enough to kill people," he responds, with a sharp finality to his tone.

"Yes, and now you're old enough to regret it," she shoots back without hesitating. She takes a beat before continuing, "I don't… you're not beyond forgiveness, you know. If you wanted to come back, right now, you could. Your mother would be thrilled."

"I'd like to," he responds evenly. "Not yet. Maybe not ever. But… when I feel like I've earned the right to be a person again. I'd really like to go back."

Slowly enough that he could move away if he wanted, Rey leans over, closing the distance between them and resting her head on his shoulder. He tenses, but she doesn't move away. "There's always a place for you," she says, "when you're ready."

* * *

It's slow but steady, after that. It's small steps, little things, long conversations and longer silences. Slowly the part of Rey that still balks at him, hates him, fears him, recedes into nothing. Everything about him that was worthy of hatred and fear is gone, everything that made him Kylo Ren disappeared along with the name when he left it all behind. He's not a fearsome Sith apprentice anymore, he's just… a man, as mortal and flawed as the rest of them, overwhelmed with regret so deep he feels as if he'll drown in it. When Rey looks at him, she doesn't see a monster anymore. She sees him like she sees a broken-down machine- anyone else would write it off, leave him for the birds, and maybe she should too, but she can't help seeing the potential, seeing what could happen with just a little bit of care and trust and work. She _has_ to try.

So, she tries. Little by little. She leaves her staff saber further and further away every time they see each other, until she doesn't bring it out with her at all. He notices, but doesn't say anything. His look of shocked awe and confusion says enough. She talks to him like any of her other friends, chatter about the Jedi order and about the Senate proceedings, cracking jokes and relishing the sound of his laugh every time she gets one. It's always short and surprised, like he forgot laughing was something he was capable of.

When a diplomatic mission goes wrong and ends in bloodshed, hundreds of lives lost, she goes to the planet forgetting he's there, and ends up telling him the whole tale through barely-repressed tears. He listens in silence, his face unreadable.

"Hundreds of people died," she says, her voice cracking, "and it's my fault."

"No," he replies immediately. "You did your best. You did all you could. If it didn't work, it's not because you didn't do enough."

"How do you know?" she asks, more out of spite than anything.

He just shrugs, his hand going up to his scar absently like it does sometimes. "I know you. You've never given anything less than all you have. If there was a way to prevent those deaths, you would have found it." She leans over and hugs him, and he stiffens, sucking in a breath of surprise. After a moment she lets go, and he doesn't look at her for a while, but she can feel something twisting and bubbling in the Force, a knot of confused emotions.

She doesn't go back that night, and ends up falling asleep in the grass, shoulder-to-shoulder next to him while he picks star systems out of the blue velvet sky and tells her stories he remembers hearing about them as a kid. She's not sure how many are true, but the low, smooth tone of his voice lulls her off to sleep somewhere in the middle of a story about the ice planet Hoth.

When she wakes up a while later, jerking out of her dream in surprise, he's staring at her with that same mix of shock and awe and confusion as when she started leaving her saber-staff behind.

"What?" she asks groggily, rubbing at her eyes.

"You fell asleep," he says, somewhere between amazed and utterly bewildered.

"Yeah, so? I'm tired," she replies defensively.

"No, no, you- what if, I don't know, I wanted to hurt you? You were asleep, you couldn't have stopped me."

"Were you planning on it?"

"No!" he exclaims. "But- you had no way of knowing that."

"It's called trust," she yawns. "We're not enemies, Ben, I haven't assumed you were out to get me for a while."

"You trust me," he murmurs, mostly to himself. She hums in response and stares up at the stars, shivering a little. She's still wearing her thin, light Coruscant clothes. When he notices, he doesn't even hesitate to take off his rough, brown cloak and toss it over her.

"Thanks," she says, pulling it closer. "I don't think I want to make the flight back tonight. I'll just sleep out here and go back in the morning."

"Won't they worry?"

She's already half asleep but she responds, "Finn knows where I am. If they need me they'll call me." He takes a sharp breath, going tense, but she's asleep and doesn't ask.

When she wakes up in the morning, she's still wrapped tightly in his cloak, but they shifted in their sleep and now her head is pillowed on his chest, his arm lightly over her shoulder. She extricates herself carefully and lays the cloak over him before stretching and leaving in her fighter.

* * *

"It was you, you know."

"Hm?" Rey looks up from the flowers she's inexpertly weaving into a crown when he speaks. Plants are still one of her favorite things about not being on Jakku anymore- she has a long list of favorite things about not being on Jakku anymore. Mostly it consists of "significantly less sand" and "I have friends now," but plants are way up there too. He's braiding together long strands of grass, just for something to do with his hands, and it looks way better than hers.

"It was… I decided to leave after you spared me." She frowns in confusion. "On Starkiller," he clarifies. "You could have killed me and you didn't. I hadn't thought… honestly I thought if you got the chance you'd take it without hesitation. Mercy isn't something I ever expected to get."

"I'm not a killer," she says, narrowing her eyes at him.

He grins. "I know. I didn't realize that, then, so it was enough to be the last in a long line of things that made the First Order seem… unattractive, as a prospect for the rest of my life."

"So it wasn't really me, then," she says. "It was you. You chose to leave, you just needed an excuse."

He nods after a moment of thought. "I never wanted to kill all those people," he says softly. "The Hosnian system. I tried to stop it, but I should have tried harder. I think I could have prevented it, if I'd just…." His fists clench tightly, tearing the grass braid, and his face contorts in self-directed anger.

She reaches out and takes his hand. "All the 'if only' in the world can't change anything now. You tried." He breathes deeply, relaxing, then squeezes her hand gratefully. Even though she can still feel the burn of his emotions in the Force, she's not worried about it. She smiles at him. They've come a long way from the duel on Starkiller.

When she finishes her uneven, graceless flower crown, she settles it on his head, where his unruly black curls are beginning to grow out again. "You look lovely," she says, grinning brightly at him. "I have to leave tomorrow, there's something happening on the other side of the galaxy that urgently needs the Jedi. Even Luke's coming. It's all very hush-hush, I don't even know what the actual mission is. I'll be back in about two weeks or so if everything goes right."

He frowns, and he looks like he's about to say something, but settles for a curt nod and a pat on the back, the most physical contact he'll initiate. "Be safe," he tells her, and she smiles and hugs him, taking a small delight in the fact that he doesn't tense when she touches him anymore, then waves as she walks back to her ship.

* * *

Things don't go the way they're supposed to. They get ambushed on the mission and Rey is taken prisoner. She's not sure how long they have her in captivity, but she escapes and manages to make contact with Coruscant. Her captors were liberal with their torture and stingy with their humanity, so by the time rescue arrives, she's so light-headed from hunger, thirst, blood loss, and pain that she passes out almost immediately upon being found.

When she wakes up, it's in a hospital room on Coruscant, and for a long minute she thinks she's either dreaming or dead, because Finn and Poe are sitting on one side of the room, and Ben on the other, and no one is trying to kill each other. Then she sees Poe's unwavering glare and his hand steady on the blaster at his hip and she realizes that, yeah, it's real.

"Good morning," she croaks, voice hoarse from disuse, mouth dry and fuzzy. "Is there any water?"

All three men jump immediately to their feet and jostle to be next to her. Finn uses the Force to push the other two aside, which Luke probably wouldn't approve of, and ends up next to her, helping her sit up and lifting a glass of water to her lips.

"I can do that myself, thanks," she says, reaching up to take it. "How long have I been out?"

"You left a month ago," Ben replies, his voice rough and quiet, almost out of place in the clean white hospital room. He looks even worse than usual, like he hasn't slept in weeks. "You've been asleep for five days, counting the time you had to spend in a bacta tank."

"Tall, dark, and angry here showed up about four days after you left insisting something was wrong," Poe says. Ben scowls. "Nobody believed him till we got word from Luke and Finn that you'd been captured, but by then no one knew where you were."

"The Force," Rey says in dawning understanding. "You could tell I was in danger?"

"How could I not?" Ben replies, looking away, trying to disguise his concern and relief under a veneer of gruffness. "It was like a siren in my head all hours of the day. You could've woken the dead." Rey and Finn exchange a look, and Poe's eyes flick back and forth questioningly between the two of them.

"Can I speak to Ben alone?" she says to the others. Poe starts to protest, but Finn takes him by the hand and pulls him out of the room, talking about telling Leia and Chewie the good news. Ben pulls up a chair and sits down next to her bed, so he's not towering over her anymore.

"I was worried," he says, eyes downcast. "They wouldn't listen to me, I told them to call you back but my mother was the only one who believed me, and she didn't have enough power to stop the mission."

"She knows you're here, then?" Rey asks. He nods, an indecipherable expression crossing his face, and she grins. "I bet she was happy to see you."

"She cried," he replies evenly. There's a pain in his eyes that speaks of more to the story, but she won't press. "She wanted to wait for you to wake up, too, but unlike the rest of us layabouts she has a galaxy to run, so she sends her regards."

"You're staying?" she asks, resisting the urge to fiddle nervously with her hands.

"Yeah," he responds, reaching out and resting his hand on hers. "I'm staying."


End file.
